Description

The catacombs of Zob are believed to contain untold wealth and fortune, and this is enough to tempt you. That means entering an imposing dungeon filled with strange foes - Mages, Servants of Set, Revenent Guardians and many more. After taking 14 days of training to build up your skills, or taking the default combinations, your magic and swordplay must face the challenge.

Swords and Sorcery is a dungeon-crawler that uses the proprietary MIDAS system to present a first-person visual representation of your position, in a manner similar to Bard's Tale. This is on the left of the screen, with a map of your surroundings on the right, and text messages detailing your current situation below.

Below even that are the menus, which are activated by moving a highlight bar left and right before selecting the correct option. Enemies you meet can be threatened, bribed or grovelled to. You can activate any spells you collect, including un-poison, weaken enemy, and freeze enemy.

Watch out for magical barriers and traps, and use the transporters to your advantage. When you encounter magic would will have to test it to determine its use or detriment.

The Armour of Zob is split into several pieces, which would will hopefully find on your quest. There are also extra swords and shields to collect, plus some treasure as a reward.

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Trivia

Commodore 64 version

This game was advertised to have been released for the Commodore 64 but, as of this trivia's date, no definitive proof that the C64 version ever came out has been found.

Long preview time

It was over a year between the game's first preview (Crash!, October 1984) and first review (the same magazine's January 1986 issue). Despite this, PSS still hedged their bets, with the manual stating:

"Due to the enormous complexity and nature of Swords and Sorcery, PSS cannot guarantee that all errors have been removed. If any fault does occur then please contact us, taking note of the location and nature of the problem, in order that we may correct future versions."

In hindsight, the days of games requiring patch after patch to work perfectly may have been closing in by this time.

Awards

Computer Gamer

February 1986 (issue #17) - Included in the list Spectrum Collection (the best Spectrum ZX games since 1985 by editorial staff choice)